12. What J2EE platform do you use?

The biggest change here is the appearance of "None" as a
response, based on write-ins from last year. JBoss is up six points
from last year, WebSphere three and WebLogic two, and the rest
(Oracle, SunOne, and JRun) mostly static or slipping, except for
Geronimo, which has doubled from two to four percent.

Free Responses

13. If you were to predict, what Java technology will really
make it big in the next 12 months?

A few people answered this question with a rhetorical "If I knew
that, I'd be a VC instead of a programmer." Granted, no one here is
a Cassandra. In fact, of 455 people who answered this question last
year, nobody picked AJAX as the hot topic of 2005.

Still, given the 670 responses this year, the technology voted
most likely to succeed is JavaServer Faces (JSF), mentioned in 100
responses. Next is Spring at 82, AJAX at 69, EJB 3.0 at 64, and
J2ME/embedded with 37 responses. Other interesting responses: 16
people picked Trails or other Rails-like approaches to web app
development as the next big thing, 16 people still think Swing's
day is yet to come (as opposed to nine for SWT), and aspect-oriented
programming is on the radar for 43 of you.

14. If you could choose, what Java book would you most like to
see O'Reilly publish in the next 12 months?

Someone replied "Are there any topics left?" and maybe that's a
good question. The O'Reilly Java book line is immense. Some of the
specific topics that got a lot of mentions were AJAX (54 mentions,
plus another four for DWR),
Hibernate (34 mentions--please check out Hibernate: A
Developer's Notebook and Better, Faster,
Lighter Java), JavaServer Faces (24 mentions--please
check out JavaServer
Faces), Design Patterns (15 mentions, several of them for
"J2EE patterns"), J2ME (13 mentions, plus another three for
"embedded Java").

Of the specific O'Reilly series, there were 16 requests for
"Head First," 15 each for "Developer's Notebook" and "Cookbook"
titles, nine for more "Nutshell" books, and one for a "Java
Annoyances."

15. What topics would you like to see receive more coverage on
ONJava.com?

With so many frameworks available to the Java developer (not to
mention the size of the language and its core libraries), it's not
surprising that this question had 564 divergent responses. The top
responses were Spring (61 mentions), JavaServer Faces (48), and
Hibernate (45). EJB was requested 23 times. For building apps,
articles on Ant and Maven were requested 11 times each. Off the
server, Swing clocked 28 requests, J2ME 19 requests, and SWT eight.
Sixteen people wanted more articles on Eclipse, while two wanted more
NetBeans coverage.

In the abstract, there were 17 requests for articles on best
practices, 15 for design patterns, 11 for performance, and five for
security. Eleven people wanted "advanced" articles, while only three
wanted articles for beginners.

Pending Purchases

This might not be the most exciting set of questions for
developers, but the results are included for completeness.

16. What software programs, or types of software programs, do
you plan to purchase in the next 12 months?

Overwhelmingly, the answer to this question was "nothing,"
usually with a note to the effect that "everything we use is open
source." As many readers reported they planned to buy video games as did those planning to buy performance tools (nine), and that was
far more than planned to buy WebLogic (three), WebSphere (three), Mac OS X
(three) or Windows Vista (two). IntelliJ IDEA, with 11 responses, is the
most-likely-to-buy item on the list.

17. What hardware, or types of hardware, do you plan to
purchase in the next 12 months?

Of 472 responses, 106 people said they planned not to buy any
hardware, or at least had no such plans. Of those likely to buy, 85
expect to buy servers, 33 people plan to buy Apple Macs, while 25
people plan to buy PCs. Sixty-six plan to buy laptops, while 19 plan to
buy desktops, with 15 planning to buy monitors. A handful of people
noted they'd need to buy new video cards to run Windows Vista.